Spiders

I could use a little advice here… I have probably more lumber than I need but I can’t bring myself to get rid of any of it. I have some good red cedar and some maple that I wish to use for projects. Anyway…. I am “infested” with spiders. I am wondering what is the best way to get rid of them. I am leaning towards a bug bomb but I don’t know how that will affect the wood and the machinery. I work out of a 24×24 garage “shop” amd things are quite crowded. Do y’all have any suggestions?? The spider webs are all over the place! They spin them faster than I can knock them down….

-- TNJames

34 replies so far

I too have a large number of spiders in the shop (and the house too) – amazing and beautiful creatures.Excepting the fact that you obviously don’t like them being there, can they do any harm to wood or machinery?

-- "Do not speak – unless it improves on silence." --- "Following the rules and protecting the regulations is binding oneself without rope."

Spiders are bad in East Tn. this year also. Bombs are the most effective since it will get into the smallest crack. Floor to ceiling. Probaly have to bomb again in a couple of weeks to get em. Sprays aren’t to good for spiders. I’d rather have a snake around me than a spider. I had a black snake abt 4ft er at my shop i knew he was there it didn’t bother me and i didn’t bother him.

What I’m mainly worried about is how or if the bug bomb willl affect the lumber and my woodworking tools. It’s not that I don’t like them (actually, I have nothing against spiders except in my shop they are building webs all over the place). That’s the part I don’t like.

The spiders in my shop and I have a mutual agreement. They don’t bite me and eat all the mosquitoes and bugs that do bit me, and I don’t kill them. So far we have both held up our ends of the agreement

If you are adamant about removing the spiders from the shop, you can wage an effective battle against them with a shopvac. Knocking the webs down is a complete lesson in futility, however, the vacuuming of the webs complete with spiders will physically remove them from the area without the introduction of questionable chemicals. I don’t particularly like spiders, and will sweep errant ones up as I move about the shop, but have never considered insectile genocide. As long as they remain out of my way, they can live their lives munching on the really annoying insects.

I have a lot of spiders in my shop too. And like others I don’t bother them unless they are in the way or look dangerous. Just the other night I went out to the shop to make sure I had everything locked up and I ran into the biggest spider I’ve ever seen. It must have had the leg span larger than a baseball and it pitter pattered like a rodent when it ran. It even knock off the better part of a small handful of screws I had sitting on the window sill when it ran through. That sucker was fast and could jump too. I wasn’t quick enough to smash it but I managed to suck it up in my shop vac. Then it was easy to get with a 2×4. I’ve never really been afraid of spiders but that one kind of gave me the jitters.

That’s just a wood spider. We have a lot of those in the North East. They are called a wood spider because they look like wood, not because they eat it. They are not aggressive at all, but can get really big and are really fast. Those guys REALLY gobble down the annoying bugs. They don’t build webs, they actively hunt out other bugs.

Fortunately I mostly have the wood spiders BobE pictured. they are polite enough to not even build webs. It still freaks me out when I see them curled up on the back of a board, but some encouragement with gentle compressed air sends them scurrying on their marry way gobbling up mosquitoes and those little gnats that love to get stuck in wet finish.

Most of the spiders in my shop and tack room are Brown Recluse so I really don’t try to live in harmony with them. I have used a lot of ‘bombs’ in both places and have never seen any adverse effects on my wood, leather, or cast iron tool tables. Check the label on the bomb to see that it is recommended for spiders.If you have a lot of small dead “ghosts”, these are most likely dead male Recluse spiders.

Arachnids are rarely adversely affected by “bug bombs”. If you can kill arachnids with airborne gases, the residual will have detrimental effects on mammals to say the least.Remove the food sources and the spiders will move out.